The Overflowing Cup

‘’My cup runneth over.” — Psalm xxiii., 5.

EVERY few years we have people critical of the Thanksgiving proclamation. They say, “We have nothing to be thankful for. Commerce down; manufactures dull; commercial prospects blasted. Better have a day for fasting than a day for feasting.” Indeed, have you nothing to be thankful for? Does your heart beat? Do your eyes see? Do your ears hear? Did you breakfast this morning? Did you sleep last night? Are the glorious heavens above your head? Is the solid earth beneath your feet? Have you a Bible, a Christ, a proffered heaven? Ay, those of us who are the worst off have more blessings than we appreciate, and “our cup runneth over.”

There is a table spread to-day across the top of the two great ranges of mountains which ridge this continent — a table which reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific seas. It is the Thanksgivingtable of the nation. They come from the East and the West and the North and the South, and sit at it. On it are smoking the products of all lands, birds of every aviary, cattle from every pasture, fish from every lake, feathered spoils from every form. The fruitbaskets bend down under the products plucked from the peach-fields of New Jersey, the apple-orchards of Western New York, the orange-groves of Florida, the vineyards of Ohio, and the nuts threshed from New England woods.

The bread is white from the wheat-fields of Illinois and Michigan, the banqueters are adorned with California gold, and the table is agleam with Nevada silver, and the feast is warmed with, the fire-grates heaped up with Pennsjdvania coal. The hall is spread with carpets from Lowell mills, and to-night the lights will flash from bronzed brackets of Philadelphia manufacture. The fingers of Massachusetts girls have hung the embroidery; the music is the drumming often thousand mills, accompanied by the shout of children let loose for play, and the gladness of harvesters driving barnward the loads of sheaves, and the thanksgivings of the nation which crowd the celestial gates with doxologies, until the oldest harper of heaven can not tell where the terrestrial song ends and the celestial sons; begins.

Welcome, Thanksgiving-day! Whatever we may think of New England theology, we all like New England Thanksgiving -day. What meant the rush last night to the depots, and the long rail trains darting their lanterns along the tracks of the Stonington and Providence, Boston and Lowell, New Haven and Springfield, Plymouth and South Braintree railroads? Ask the happy group in the New England farm-house. Ask the rustics in the cabin among the Green Mountains. Ask the New England villngers whose song of praise this morning comes over the Berkshire hills. Oh, it is a great day of national festivity! Clap your hands, ye people, and shout aloud for joy! Through the organ -pipes let there come down the thunder of a nation’s rejoicing. Blow the cornet! Wave the palm branches! Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! “My cup runneth over!”

I propose to speak to you this morning about thanksgiving in the house, thanksgiving in the hovels of the poor, thanksgiving in the church, thanksgiving in the city, thanksgiving in the nation.

AVithout stopping to ring your door -bell, I come into your house, and I look around and see what God has been doing for you during the past year. You say, “Come in. I am very glad to see you. Sit down in this arm-chair or on this sofa, and make yourself at home.” No, my friends, I can not stop. I just want to look around, and see what God has been doing for you in your home. “Oh,” you say-, “our house is not so large now as the one we used to have.” I answer, What of that? It is a great deal of trouble to keep a large house clean. Besides that, a small house is coT.y. Besides that, it is a bad thing for children to have a luxuriant starting, for when they get out in the world and are married, then they begin to talk about the way they used to have it, and say, “I haven’t been accustomed to such cramped -up apartments.” Bless God if you have a real snug, cozy home. But I step into your parlor, and I find there the evidences of refinement and culture and friendship. The sofas and chairs are not always empty. Sympathizing friends sit here when you have trouble. Mirthful friends sit here when you are in good cheer. This chandelier will flash down upon social gatherings, and upon Christmas-tree, and upon merry-making. These keys have often been thrummed by your children, and there is in the port-folio on the music-rack many a well-worn song of “OUl Oaken Bucket” and “Old Arm-chair;” and while your grandfathers entertained their guests under rough-hewn rafters and on bare floors, you have a parlor in which are the evidences of painter’s pencil and engraver’s knife and sculptor’s chisel, and I stand in the midst of all this refinement and elegance of your parlor and demand your thanksgiving unto the Lord.

I go on to the next room, and step into your nursery, and I am greeted with the shout and laughter of your children. They romp; they hide; they clap their hands. I get down on the floor and play with them. What bright eyes! AV bat merry hearts! What swift feet! God bless them! Tlaeir little troubles dissolve in a tear. Their little enmities are gone after a minute’s pouting. Busy all day, without fatigues, they fall asleep chattering, and wake up singing. And the little baby has its realm, waving its sceptre over the parental heart, and you look down in its wondering eyes and see whole worlds of promise there, and think to yourself, “Those little hands will smooth my locks when they get gray, and those little feet will run for me when I am sick, and those eyes will weep for me when I am gone.” Ob, hush him to sleep with a holy song! Let him know the name of Jesus long before he can pronounce it. Thank God to-day that upon your home has come the brightness of childhood, and drop a tear of grief for those who weep over a despoiled cradle, and toys that never will be caught up again by little hands now still, alas, forever!

I step from this room into the dining-hall. You have not invited me to dine with you; but I come right in without invitation, and sit down at your table to-day. I do not see any signs of starving around here, although you talk so much about hard times. Besides that, it seems to me you have all the world waiting upon you. The cabinet-makers have prepared with great toil the furniture; the farmers worried themselves almost to death in raising the wheat from ^Yhich this bread was made; the sailor was lashed to the mast to bring you those foreign luxuries; whole herds and flocks, at different times, have fallen under the knife of the butcher to please your palate; the miners toiled in damp and darkness to get the coal that warms your dining-room to-day. Summer sun and driving snow and howling tempest have sent their contributions to your table to-day. None of 3’our children are crying for bread in vain. The barrel of meal has not wasted; the cruse of oil has not failed. Bread enough and to spare, while many have perished with hunger. Oh, do not, to-day, draw your knife across the sharpening steel until you have sent up one word of thanksgiving to the Lord who has given you all these mercies! And if you are not accustomed to asking a blessing at the table, I think this day will be a good one in which to begin, and if you can not think of any thing else to say, then take the words of my text, “My cup runneth over!”

I step out from the dining-hall into 3-our library, and see your table covered with books and magazines and newspapers fresh from the publishing houses. It seems to me really as if the historians, and the fabulists, and the pamphleteers, and the philosophers of the world were waiting your bidding. Here, on this historic shelf of your library, you have Bancroft and Prescott and Macaulay to tell you the rude story of early America, or describe the wonders of IMexican scenery, or call back the eloquence of the old Parliaments that death long ago dissolved with more than the imperiousness of Cromwell. And here is your poetic shelf, on which stand Dr. Young with his weeping harp, and Walter Scott sounding the Highland bagpipe, and Longfellow ringing out the war-whoop through “Hiawatha,” and William Cullen Bryant mingling the moan of the wild woods with the call of the brown thresher. And here is the shelf that Dickens has all to himself, from “Oliver Twist” to “Edwin Drood,” avenging the world’s sorrows, weeping the world’s sins, exposing the world’s hypocrisies, winning the world’s applause. What a pity that, by high living, he went away so soon! Moan out the grief, O bells of Westminster. Thank God for books — plenty of them — books to make you study, books to waft you into reverie, books to make you weep, books to make you laugh, books in cloth, books in morocco, in satin, in gold; books of travel, of anecdote, of memoir, of legend; books scrolled and starred and wreathed and columned; books about insects, about birds, about shells, about every thing; books for the young, books for the old. “Oh,” says some one, “I have not all these luxuries; I have not all these comforts of the parlor, of the nurserj’, of the dining-hall, of the library.” But, my brother, most certainly you know something of the height and depth and length and breadth of that sweet, tender, joj’ous, triumphant word, home! Do not look at it as a place merely to stay in, as the lion looks at his lair, or the fox his burrow, or the eagle his eyrie. Do not call it your apartments, or 3’our lodgings, or your domicile, but — by all the memory of those who are gone; by the memory of the old people, whether here or there; for the sake of childhood; for the sake of all that is good, and pure, and true, and blessed — call it home. Gather your fiimilies together to-day! If you have a musical instrument, open it; if you have not, open your heart — the best of all musical instruments — and while the Lord listens, and the memory of the past rushes through your soul,” Oh, give thanks

1J:2 THE OVEIiFLOWING CUP.

unto the Lord; for be is good; for Lis mercy endureth forever;” and let each one clap his bands, and say for himself, “My cup runneth over!”

I pass on now to look at Thanksgiving in the hovels of the poor. No banquet smoking on their table. It is a sad thing to see a poor man, the evening before Thanksgiving, looking into a full grocery-window, while he thinks of his destitute home. It is hard to be hungry in a world with ripe orchards and luxuriant harvests and herds of cattle driven to the slaughtering! It is hard to be cold in a world where the forests are waiting for the axe-man and the mines are waiting for the miners. It is a hard thing to be unclad in a world, where there are so many swift cylinders in motion, so many manufactories of goods, and where the fox, and the beaver, and the Arctic bear, and the Siberian squirrel are dying in order that men may have their furs. To-day do not stuff 3-ourself to surfeiting without thinking of those who are gaunt with hunger; do not put your feet up by the warm register without thinking, at least once, of those whose last scuttle of coal is gone. When, to-night, 3’ou turn on the gas full head, and it glitters along the wall in bubbles of fire, do not forget to think of those whose last candle has hissed in the socket. If you have nothing better than an old jacket, or a worn-out pair of shoes, or a coat that has been patched until it has become “a coat of many colors,” give something this day to the poor. There are two things that I should like to have my Lord Jesus Christ say to me in the last day: “I was hungry, and ye fed me.” “I was naked, and ye clothed me.” God help the poor!

But I pass on now, and look at Thanksgiving in the church. Last Thankso-iving we were churchless. Wc had a wall partly up, a pile of bricks, a heap of lumber. That was about our position. It was a doleful day to me. I wandered about with my coat-collar up, and rubbing my frost-bitten right ear, and there was not, in all the day, any thing that looked like Thanksgiving save the dinner, and that was not so good as usual. We felt like the Israelites in captivity, and would, like them, have hung our harps on the willows, but for the reason our organ was burned up, and we had no harp, and no willows to hang it on. But where are we to-day? Is this our roof? Are these our altars? Is this our spiritual home? IIow goodly arc thy tents, 0 Jacob! “Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof Mark yo, well her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that 3’e may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death.” With organ, with cornet, with multitudinous shout of great congregation, express this day your praise to God, “Our cup runneth over.” But better than all material structure is the spiritual blessing that descended, and the multitude of souls who, during these nine months, have stood up at this altar, connecting themselves M’itli our membership — the blessing still hovering — and at every service immortal souls saved. “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” I know there are those who think the Church is a museum of antediluvian fossils. They think it did very well once, but it is behind the times. That is not 5^our opinion. You love, first, your home, and next, your church. O ye descendants of the men who were hounded amidst the Highlands of Scotland, and who fell, at Bothwell Bridge! O ye sons and daughters of the men who came across wintry seas to build their log churches in the American wilderness! 0 ye sons and daughters of those who stood in the awful siege of Leyden, and shouted the martyr’s triumph in the horrors of the Brussels market-place! O ye descendants of the men whose garments were dyed in the wine-press of Saint Bartholomew Massacre! ye sons and daughters of the fire! what do yon think, to-day, of a quiet church, and a free pulpit, and a Gospel winged with mercy and salvation? AVhat imperial edict forbids our convocation? What sword thirsts for our blood? What fires are kindled for our torture? None. Defended by the law, invited by the Gospel, baptized by the Spirit, we are here to-day free men of the State, free men of God. Glorious Church! “Twelve wells of water, and three-score-and-ten palm-trees.” “My cup runneth over.” Oh, this day bring the richest Thanksgiving garland, and put it upon the brow of Him who bought the Church, died for your sins, and prepared for you a grnnd and glorious inheritance. Thanks be unto God for the unspeakable gift of a Saviour.

But I pass on and consider Thanksgiving in the city. It is five years since I came to live in this city. I have seen many cities on both sides the sea, but I have never seen any I like quite so well as this. What quiet Sabbaths! What large and beautiful churches! What costly and magnificent Mercantile Library! What a glory our Academy of Music! What institutions of learning — Packer, the Polytechnic, the Adelphi, and our glorious common schools with the Bible in them! Our long lines of streets, beautifully shaded. Our Park, with its arborescent drives, and its affluence of flowers, and its sculptured bridges, and its exquisite lake. Prospered city. Our Maj’or honorable. Our judges just. Our police efficient. Beautiful. Brooklyn. Blessed forever be her great population! When we

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get the bridge done, we will go over and make New York just like it. But, after all, I think New York is as moral a city as there is under the sun, considering the number of its population. We are one city, after all, on both sides of the East River. There are a great many people who think that the worst city on earth is the combined city of New York and Brooklyn; and I do not know but that some people, from the exaggeration in regard to it, may land at the foot of Cortlandt Street, and rush up to the Hudson River Railroad Depot, telling the hackman all the way to whip up the horses, lest some scourge come upon them before they get through the town. I do not know but that some countrymen coming to our city, from the stories that have been told about us, may keep looking over both shoulders lest they be garroted somewhere between Fulton Ferry and the City Hall. I think the politicians are responsible for that exaggerated statement of the way things are in this city. I really think it is a grand city, a beautiful city, to live in. Under different administrations of politics it is. We have tried all kinds — the one, perhaps, as good as the other; the chief difference between the two parties, I have found out, being that that one steals most which has the longest opportunity to steal, the change of administration often being the relief which a man gets when he changes from rheumatism to neuralgia! Still, notwithstanding all these things, I think this a fair city to live in; I do not think there is a better city under the sun. Thank God you live here, and that you can to-day boast, as Paul did, that you are the inhabitant of no mean city.

I pass on once more to look at Thanksgiving in the nation. Peace all through the land. The Indians quiet in the plains. No foreign guns coming up through the “Narrows.” Insurrection in New Orleans conquered bj a revolution at the ballot-box. The South at last satisfied that the wrongs of the last six years will be righted. No American slavery to fight about. By a revolution in national politics, both political parties put upon their good behavior; that party which does the most for the people in the next year and a half winning the Presidential chair and the national supremacy In our own State and in our own time we have had a wonderful thing occur in this very month, when the question was who should be Governor, as between two men, both of them honorable and Christian men — a good man going out and a good man coming in. John A. Dix followed by Samuel J. Tilden. So also with our financial prospects, they are all brightening.

We have all been compelled to economize; and you well know that economy is the primordial element in national prosperity. If a man should make ten thousand dollars a year and spend eleven thousand dollars, he is not so well off as the man who makes one thousand dollars a year and spends nine hundred dollars. That process of economy going on all through the land has been a healthy process, and we shall feel the good results of it after a while. Superfluous railroads have ceased building; commercial balloons have lost their gas. We have almost a certain prospect of a speedy resumption of specie payments; and the day will soon come when a dollar will mean a dollar, and not something else. The ragged currency will be ended. We have wandered about, supposing we had our pockets full of mioney, when they turned out to be only the carles-de-visiie of some celebrated member of the Cabinet; Mr. Spinner, in awful chirography at the bottom of the bill, certifying that it was a good picture of Hugh M’Culloch or Mr. Boutwell.

Now, all these tilings are brightening prospects. “Oh,” say some, “we never can get out of this financial depression.” Why, my brethren, men of business, we have had dark days before this. In 1857 there were four thousand two hundred and fifty-seven failures, to the amount of two hundred and sixty-five million eight hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. People said, “We’ll never get out of it.” Yet in two years there was not a vestige left of that great commercial disaster. The wheels flew and the feet of American enterprise tramped on, and we soon got over it. Then came the dark days of 1861, when there were five thousand nine hundred and thirty-five business failures, amounting to one hundred and seventy-eight million six hundred and thirty -two thousand one hundred and seventy dollars. Then people threw up their hands, and said, “We shall never get over this.” And yet the largest fortunes of the country have been made since then, and our national prosperity has increased bej’ond the capacity of any arithmetic to state it. If God brought us out of the trouble of 1857 and*out of the misfortunes of 1861, is he not strong enough to bring us out of the troubles of 1874? He will. He will. I believe the prosperities that are yet to come will soon put out of sight all our past national accumulations. Our national debt is rapidly dwindling. Added to all, the flict that we have one hundred and sixty-two thousand square miles of coal, and another one hundred and sixty-two thousand square miles of iron, it seems to me that the metals of the earth are to-day, as with the golden lips of California and the silver tongue of Nevada, promising the fact that there shall be no end to our national resources.

But look at the harvests. I do not suppose that foi*

1J:8 THE OVERFLOWING CUR

more than three or four times within the memory of any body here there have been such harvests as we have had this year. The grain -fields have passed their harvests above the veto of drought and deluge. The freight cars are not large enough to bring down the grain to the seaboard. The canal -boats are crowded with bread-stuffs. Hark to the rushing of the wheat through the great Chicago corn “elevators.” Hark to the rolling of the hogsheads of the Cincinnati pork-packers! Enough to eat, and at cheap prices. Enough to wear, and of home manufacture. If some have and some have not, then may God help those who have to hand over something to those who have not! Clear the track for the rail trains that come down, bringing the wheat, and the barley, and the oats, and the hops, and the lumber, and the leather, and every thing for man and every thing for beast.

I can not, I dare not, detain you any longer from the home group. The housekeepers will be angry with me if I keep you until the viands are cold. Set the chairs to the table — the easy -chairs for gran’Hfather and grandmother, if they be still alive; the high chair for the youngest and the least. Then put out your hand to take the full cup of thanksgiving; bring it toward your lips, your hands trembling with emotion; and if the chalice shall spill on the cloth, do not be chagrined, but look up thankfully to heaven, and say, “My cup runneth over!”